Brown v. Google LLC

Background

Google filed an administrative motion asking to seal portions of the parties’ April 23, 2021 joint discovery letter brief and related charts concerning class-member identification and plaintiffs’ discovery requests.

Legal standard

Court records generally are presumed open to public inspection. The court explained that the standard for sealing depends on how the records relate to the case. Because the information was submitted in connection with a discovery-related motion rather than a motion addressing the merits, the court applied Rule 26(c)’s “good cause” standard. The court also noted that the parties had to follow Civil Local Rule 79-5.

Ruling

After considering the motions to seal, supporting declarations, and the filings, the court granted the requests as to the specified redacted portions. For Chart A, the court approved sealing portions at pages 4 and 5 that described highly confidential and proprietary features of Google’s internal systems and operations, including types and functions of unauthenticated identifiers and cookies. For Chart B, it approved sealing the listed redacted portions on pages 13, 15–18, and 20–23 for the same type of confidential Google information. For Chart C, it approved sealing portions on pages 30–32 and 36–37 concerning details of plaintiffs’ private browsing and personal email addresses. The court stated that the redactions were narrowly tailored to protect information maintained as confidential and not generally known to the public or competitors. The order was entered by United States Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen.